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Public Universities and Colleges directed to open separate maintenance bank accounts

Minister of Higher Education Professor Nkandu Luo’s office, regarding maintenance of institutions, lack of sporting activates in the Institutions for students. It has become critical that money collected for fees for use for maintenance, sports activities, and union activities are banked separately so that in the absence of these activities, the Institution can explain what they have done with this budget line.

Minister of Higher Education Professor Nkandu Luo has, therefore, directed all public universities and colleges in the country to open up separate maintenance bank accounts for the purposes of accountability. Professor Nkandu Luo said that there is no need for institutions to maintain one bank account where all the fees will be paid into. She made the directive when she made an impromptu visit at Kitwe Trades Training Institute (KTTI) where she noted that the situation in most of the learning institutions is the same. She found the hostels and workshops still in a dilapidated state. She observed that students in higher learning institutions apart from tuition fees also pay for; maintenance, recreation, and union fees but all the fees are considered as tuition hence the other activities are not considered.

Maintenance fee is supposed to go towards the maintenance of the school but that has not been the case and as a result, students are subjected to learning in classrooms with broken doors and window panes, cracked floors, broken chairs. “It is extremely unfair and irresponsible to subject students to such kind of learning environment when each year students pay something towards maintenance fees to their respective institutions,” Professor Nkandu Luo said.

She noted that it was high time management in the institutions started accounting for the resources and this was one of the ways to do so.